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Rufino Blanco Fombona: An Exile in Spain

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Bolívar’s Afterlife in the Americas
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Abstract

Rufino Blanco Fombona, an arch critic of Juan Vicente Gómez who was briefly a supporter of his when he took power from Cipriano Castro in 1908, would have nothing to do with the positivist visions of José Gil Fortoul or Laureano Vallenilla Lanz. Throughout his career, this major writer from the Venezuelan oligarchy who opted in the early 1890s for military school rather than law school, the decision a sign of the times in a country of sporadic insurrections where arms were more valuable than letters and who participated in the Revolución Legalista (The Legalist Revolution) in 1892, the year after he entered the military academy, presented Bolívar as standing for the liberal Enlightenment principles his rivals attacked.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Judith Ewell, Venezuela and the United States: From Monroe’s Hemisphere to Petroleum’s Empire (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 114.

  2. 2.

    Rufino Blanco Fombona, Rufino Blanco Fombona: ensayos históricos (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1992). (La evolución política y social de Hispanoamérica, 1911: 153–194).

  3. 3.

    Ibid., 178.

  4. 4.

    H. W. V. Temperley, Life of Canning (London: J. Finch & Co., 1905).

  5. 5.

    Rufino Blanco Fombona, El conquistador español del siglo xvi (Madrid: Ediciones Nuestra Raza, 1920).

  6. 6.

    “Los Estados Unidos parecen destinados a plagar América de miseria en nombre de la libertad.” From a letter to Patricio Campbell written in Guayaquil on August 5, 1829.

  7. 7.

    Rufino Blanco Fombona, 1992, Rufino Blanco Fombona: ensayos históricos (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho), 197. From articles collected in La Espada de Samuray (Madrid: Editorial Mundo Latino, 1924). “La mitad de América, la parte ignorante, las masas de labriegos, apoyaban a España; y por millares, no por centenas, se cuentan los elementos españoles—y europeos de todas suerte: ingleses, franceses, alemanes—que sostuvieron con las armas en la mano la causa de América. La guerra duró hasta que los americanos de las clases humildes y campesinas, repito, se convencieron de que no convenía continuar sosteniendo a la monarqúia extranjera.”

  8. 8.

    John Lynch, 1986, The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808–1826 (N.Y.: W. W. Norton and Co.), 223.

  9. 9.

    Rafael Sevilla, 1916, Memorias de un oficial del ejército español; campañas contra Bolívar y los separatistas de América. Apreciación de la obra, por R. Blanco Fombona (Madrid: Editorial-América, Biblioteca Ayacucho series).

  10. 10.

    Rufino Blanco Fombona, Rufino Blanco Fombona: ensayos históricos (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho 1992), 432.

  11. 11.

    Rafael Sevilla, Memorias de un oficial del ejército español; campañas contra Bolívar y los separatistas de América. Apreciación de la obra, por R. Blanco Fombona (Madrid: Editorial-América, Biblioteca Ayacucho series 1916), 15.

  12. 12.

    Daniel F. O’Leary, Notas de R. Blanco Fombona (Biblioteca de la juventud hispano-americana), Gran Colombia y España (1819–1822) (Madrid: Editorial-America, 1919).

  13. 13.

    This is my translation. The book was not translated into English. Rufino Blanco Fombona, Mocedades de Bólivar (Caracas: Ministerio de Educación, 1969).

  14. 14.

    Ibid., 87.

  15. 15.

    Rufino Blanco Fombona, El pensamiento vivo de Bolívar (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1983), 9–10; 18–19.

  16. 16.

    Rufino Blanco Fombona, Mocedades de Bólivar (Caracas: Ministerio de Educación, 1969), 50–51.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 42.

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Conn, R.T. (2020). Rufino Blanco Fombona: An Exile in Spain. In: Bolívar’s Afterlife in the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26218-1_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26218-1_6

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